Since my very first mobile phone back in the day, I’ve been loyal to Nokia and I’ve been through the following phones (note, not that many for 10 years’ of phones as they are so durable):
3310 – Snake 2 was on that, amazing!
8310 – So small, 100 message in my inbox and a blue screen!
7260 – I had it in white, a colour screen, camera and the design was a bit “S” shaped – especially for all Samantha’s!
7373 – It was pink and swivelled – need I say more???
6500 – Mine was a “Classic”, i.e., small, flat, black and partially metal – it was a dream and lasted forever. I even kept a hold of it when the iPhone turned up
Approximately a year ago, I decided it was time to upgrade to the times we live in and invest in a proper smart phone. I hunted high and low for something that not only had the functionality but looked good too. The iPhone was too popular for my liking and I was way behind trend on that one and other phones just didn’t look good enough. The only phone I was really toying with was the Nokia N8 but that was just too big for my liking. Then the lovely man in the Nokia shop showed me the new C7, only just released and I fell in love with the simple yet quirky styling that all of my Nokias have provided me with. Here it is:
The phone promised to be all-singing, all-dancing and just as good as any other smart phone. Sadly, this little Nokia has let me down in every other way apart from the screen not smashing when I look at it (iPhone crap!). Check out the problems I’ve had:
- Call logs – the phone liked to delete all call logs every other day, no matter what settings it had
- Predictive text – not saving new words and writing very slowly
- Slow browsing- oh so slow I had to use the bf’s iPhone when out and about
These problems were despite sending the phone back a couple of times for factory updates, etc. Still, however, I persevered and trusted that they were just teething problems. It got worse.
Last month, my phone told me it needed a big update and that I should do it via a PC so I dutifully plugged in to Ovi Suite on my laptop and spent ages updating the laptop software before moving onto the phone. Halfway through the backup, the process crashed my phone. That was it, it stole all of my data; just ate it up and left me with a phone that wouldn’t even switch on. All because of something evil I’m told is called Symbian – didn’t want it anyway! My phone was sent away again 😦
Finally, the phone comes back and is all working, even though the look of the user interface has changed to something hideous! Now, however my browsing is much quicker and everything works! Yay! It’s only been a year! So why am I still unhappy? Because I’m still so far behind everyone else…
What I wanted to use my smart phone for was tracking my eBay items – there’s no eBay app…STILL! Geez! So I have reconciled myself with that horrible fact and just used what I do have on there. However, what sparked this little rant is that the other day I was reading the Boots Health & Beauty magazine and it had one of those barcode scan things in it for Treat Street. I’ve never used one of those before, even though I had the scanner app downloaded. Off I went…scan! Hmmm…nothing…scan again…still nothing. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, I’ll just use the browser to navigate to the page. What do I find…?
“Please select – iPhone or Android” – ARGHHHHHHHHHH! Bloody Nokia!
So my question is this…Nokia, how did you get it so wrong and when are you going to fix it? When my upgrade is due in May, you’ll have lost yet another loyal customer and I hate change so you must have really pi$$ed me off! x
30 Something Dreamer 
So the moral of the story is… don’t be a hater just because something is popular. Contrary to popular belief (among non-iPhone owners), the iPhone isn’t popular because people are stupid, or because Apple is good at Marketing, it’s popular because it works. It doesn’t delete call logs, freeze up, loose your data, etc. On top of that, there’s more apps available than any other phone, and it’s on a curated market, so the apps are free of phishing scams and malware. You can walk down the street and ask the firsts 100 people you pass what the ovi store is and all 100 will say they don’t know, but virtually every single one has heard of iTunes and the App Store.
I can understand brand loyalty… I owned a Razr V3 for 4 years before buying my first iPhone, and if I would have went the Motorola route, I’d have bought a Cliq or Charm.. both mid range Android handsets that enjoy the same problems Android users face. Now Motorola is trying to capitalize on the success of the Razr by coming out with a smartphone tagged with the popular Razr name. I’m not fooled… it’s just another Android handset, and won’t be able to capture the magic of it’s namesake.
The phone makers have finally figured it out… perhaps you should too… now-a-days it’s more about the “whole ecosystem” that’s being sold… not just the phone… but the phone, the application market, the movies and tv shows, books, magazines, etc, along with the compatible products (iPod, iPad, iMac) that make the phone.
I agree on some points, though judging by your own blog and all things i-related within, any argument against you would fall on almost deaf ears. I do have to contradict your point on the iPhone working though…they might work now but I have known far more people with broken iPhones than any others. I have known people to have them freeze, not be able to end calls, not ring properly and of course, to have broken screens from just the tiniest bump. They are definitely not flawless – it just depends which flaws you choose to accept.
Well, I can’t argue with the iPhone being perfect, I’m not saying it is, but I’ve owned two over the past 2 1/2 years (a 3G, then upgraded to the 4 when it came out), and between two phones in 2 years 7 months, I’ve never had a real issue aside from when I upgraded to 4.0 on my 3G. The phone lagged quite a bit, but a fix came quickly. Beyond that, I’ve never lost my data, and I do zero maintenance. I make no bones about being an iPhone fan, but I always try to not be biased. I agreed with the article in so much as I said I’d been a loyal fan of Motorola because of the Razr, but I don’t really agree with his reason for disliking the iPhone because it’s “popular”. Popular was why I bought my Razr, and it became my phone for 4 years and I took great care of it, and it was in nearly like new condition, and worked perfectly despite some light hacking of the OS. I had huge brand loyalty to Motorola, but that didn’t stop me from jumping ship to Apple (nearly two years after the iPhone debuted…) when I saw how amazing the phone was. Don’t forget, smartphones had been around for years before Apple got into the game, but they redefined what a smartphone was, and everyone else is just trying to copy
Just because I’m an iPhone fan doesn’t mean I think all other handsets are junk, and I’m nowhere near calling Nokia junk… but… Nokia (IMHO) is doing what it’s always done best…. creating the best performing and reliable handset at the cheapest possible cost so as to keep the price point low so they can have the biggest market of possible users. They’re very skilled at making cheap phones basically. Cheap in price, cheap in manufacture, but, at the same time a reliable handset that (generally) works well and is rugged enough to last many years. Apple by contrast makes one phone model…. a high end model. So it’s difficult to compare Nokia to Apple in that respect. However Nokia has been late getting into the smartphone business, as they were pretty busy being the biggest manufacturer of regular phones, and didn’t have much reason to put effort into the smartphone market. It’s been clear to me for a long time that Nokia hasn’t been serious about the smartphone market, but now that the tide is turning to smartphones, they feel they need to move more seriously in that direction. The recent alignment with Microsoft is an indication that Nokia’s clearly moving in a new direction. I think the general impression in the smartphone community is that Blackberry OS, webOS, Symbian, and Windows Mobile are old school “grandpa’s” smartphone OS. Microsoft even proved it by remaking their mobile OS so dramatically with the tile concept and all trying to give the impression they’ve invented something incredibly new & innovative. It seems to be working for them to a degree, but still, I have no brand loyalty. If Company “X” starts to make a phone more logical, easier to use, better in every way than the iPhone, I’d walk away from Apple in a heartbeat. Don’t confuse my fanboy attitude with undying loyalty to the brand.
You should post this on Nokia’s twitter and see what sort of response you get (freebies!!)
I’m in the same boat as you in not getting the iphone because I don’t like what the brand stands for, so I like shouting from the rooftops about my ‘quietly brilliant’ HTC Desire which runs on Android – I mean, I can play Mario whenever and wherever I want, what can be bad?